not cynicism, just stats. Look at how many ex stars fail when they are in their own. Few do succeed no doubt.
I would be careful. Actually, I think the statistics are hugely skewed towards continued success when you filter out anyone but extremely high achievers that made their way through the ranks of banks and hedge funds. How many of them failed after they left and started their own funds? Very few imo. We are talking here about the guys that performed throughout life at 7-8 standard deviations to the right of the mean.
Definitely disagree. More like the opposite. It is much harder to be successful running your own credit show than trading volatility. Critical research and information on credit is much harder to come by than vol related data and information. Credit trading requires an insane amount of funding. Vol trading not at all. Totally different animals. But one requires deep pockets, the other can be set up in a matter of weeks with a few guys and a minimal amount of funding. Credit requires a lot of research, manual labor pouring through reports, regulatory filings, constantly speaking to counterparts to be glued into what's going on. Vol traders sit instead comfortably behind their screens and recalibrate their models and lots of parts can be automated.
As I said,I was guessing I only know 2 credit guys,one the co founder of Marathon..Most of the vol guys I know who left IB and traded OPM blew up
1- Never worked for anyone in this business so I can’t relate about “working your way up”. Obviously the guy did something special or they wouldn’t write articles about him. Like I said “good for him” (sincerely) 2- Tiger Woods took PED’s for years which is why his body broke down. Fuck him. cheating scumbag no different than ARod, Bonds, Piazza, Giambi, etc etc
Probably because the business runs at a much larger scale. Credit operations don't make sense with a few dozens of millions in funding. A vol desk can do pretty well even making markets with 50 to 100 mil in funding, obviously absolute returns will be lower as well. It's not unheard of for good credit traders at bank prop groups or mid sized hedge funds to make a 100mil in profit in each 2 or 3 of their best years over a span of 1 or 2 decades. I worked at a large bank's prop group with 6 credit traders through the financial crisis and that group emerged later as a hedge fund. I was in the options group and we usually scored less than the credit group.